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Opera Dominates CNET Survey of "Underdog" Web Browsers
An anonymous reader writes "Whether you consider Opera an underdog browser or not, it came out on top in a feature on CNet this weekend. It was up against 'underdog Web browsers' Camino, K-Meleon, Shiira and Arora in a piece loosely aimed at determining whether these browsers are yet ready to steal significant numbers of users from Firefox, Safari, IE etc. Interesting most to me, however, is that it transpires that Shiira, the Mac browser from Japan, is one of the fastest browsers on the planet, beating the original Chrome v1.0, Firefox 3.5 and more in its benchmark tests."
I looked at that like a year ago, and it looked as if it hadn't been updated in years then. Are they back to work on it? It was quick, but it was also very crashy when I tested it out. Now that KDE4 is in Ports, Konqueror works nice and fast on OSX also, however it crashes way too often too.
...checks site... Yeah, looks like Shiira has seen some activity since February of this year. Prior to that the previous news item on their site was Jan '08, and before that, July '07. Could be nice.
I like music
The Acid3 test sort of bugs me. Yes, it's nice that browsers are fast, but even the most complex pages have lower kilobyte counts than most internet connections allow for, which means servers are the lag points, not your browser. I'd love to see a usability test sometime, rather than a flat-out speed rating. Webkit's neat, but with so many people using their browsers as a primary operating base - and we see proof of this approach in Google's development of the Chrome OS - usability is being sorely ignored in many technological benchmarks. I can't tell you how annoying it is to have Firebox' Live Bookmarks fail to load every ten minutes, it breaks the RSS experience. And while IE has its flaws and benefits, it's emulated, not inovating and old hat. Chrome is nice, I like how my computer treats it, but it's still in the works. Who's going to decide to pick up a new browser based on a speed test? Yes, CNet included some key features and noticed bugs, but Shiira and Arora both get termed works-in-progress, which does not make them underdogs now, it makes them next year's underdogs. And by the time they're ready for mass adoption, all of their good points will likely have been emulated as thoroughly as anyone cares for. Acid3 is like telling people your browser has 700 horse power, instead of the 300 horsepower their browsers have. No one cares if you top out at 200mph, the speed limit's still 60, folks.
Those things you're doing with that stuff you just bought? That's not what it's for! -
I used to use Opera for Windows a lot. It was really stable and generally just an awesome browser. Very fast. Then I found out it had an EMAIL client built in, of all things. Started to use it instead of Outlook, and it handled tons of mail via IMAP without a hitch. Wow! Then I found out it had IRC chat support. Another (though less polished) awesome feature.
Then I moved to Linux. I've used it on 5 separate Linux machines, and I still can't use Opera for the length of a single day's web browsing without a crash. It hates Flash. It also seems to hate GMail, so I'm surprised you like it. Slashdot and Opera don't seem to get along now, either. Overall, it's a great browser, but for whatever reason, the Linux version just sucks. My wife still loves it on her Windows laptop, though she despises its weird interactions with GMail.